


Drawing the Runner's Bath -- Folk song number 212, author unknown

by melissima



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:43:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5482106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melissima/pseuds/melissima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robinton struggles with the disintigration of his family in the only way he knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drawing the Runner's Bath -- Folk song number 212, author unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kol/gifts).



For the first time since they'd left Harper Hall, Robinton had a moment to really think about what was happening to his family, and why. He knew his parents loved each other, and he also knew that he, Rob, was the source of all their quarrels. Day in and day out his mother worked, either to hide his studies from his father, or to encourage his father to notice his existence. She'd conspired with all of Harper Hall to get him the training he needed. It sickened him to think that he was partly responsible for his mother's misery, but at the same time he knew she would never lay blame with him.

  
She was "napping," or so she had called it--The carpets covering her door only muffled her heartbroken sobs.

He hummed to himself, trying to drown out the sounds, but it was no use. He dare not play or sing for fear of disturbing her, so he stalked out into the passages of the hold, composing the tirade he would like to scream at his father for making his sweet, patient, lovely mother sad. He paced up a staircase and down another, almost aimlessly, until he realized he was hopelessly lost.

  
Shaking himself out of his internal rant, he looked closely at the stone floors and heavy wall hangings around him. They weren't as gorgeous as the ones he'd seen in the entry hall earlier, but they were lovely and clean, no dust to be seen. So he must not have wandered into an unused area. Relieved, he trained his hearing on the distant voices he heard, and headed in that direction. As he came nearer, he could make out words here and there: "Holdings," and "Lord Maisir," and "messages." A runner! Rob snatched the bit of hide he kept tucked in his waistband for jotting down ideas on, and wrote out in tiny, precise letters just how selfish, and mean, and just….ridiculous it was for his father to make his mother cry. He pelted up the passageway and around a sharp corner to arrive in a kind of porch, where a runner slumped in a chair piled with furs, draining a pitcher of water without even pouring it into a glass.

  
"Excuse me, Runner," he said with a bow and a little smile, "Would you be heading toward Harper Hall soon? I've a message for Master Petiron."

  
"Oho," said the runner, sizing Rob up with a smirk, "Who's it from, fosterling?"

Rob floundered a bit. He hadn't thought through the need to tell the runner that. He could say it was from his mother, but his hasty hand bore absolutely no resemblance to his mother's beautiful, loopy script. He dared not name any of the holders, either. But he was somehow reluctant to give his own name. He thought his mother wouldn't be proud of the angry little scrap of a message.

"It's from me, I'm…I'm Lexey of the Harper Hall, and I have an urgent message for Master Petiron," he held out the hide to the runner.

Instead of tucking it into the message pouch at his hip, the man peered at the scrap, and began sniggering to himself, though he showed no signs of being able to actually read it. "What could a stripling like you have to say that a Master Harper would give a moldy meatroll for?” he tossed the hide back at Rob so it bounced off his chest. “Off with you, Lexey, 'fore I let Holder Maisir know that his fosterling's trying pranks."

  
Rob felt his face heat, which only made the runner laugh harder. He snatched up the hide and fled the way he had come, stopping around the corner to stuff it into a chink between the stones that made up the wall.

As he straightened, he heard footsteps approach; Of course someone had heard. He wished he could melt into the stones. Instead, he hunched a little more and scrubbed at the traitorous tears that dripped off his chin.

"Raid says Vielar tries to tumble the milk maids every time he visits the hold," Falloner's voice was pitched for his ears only, "but none of them will have him. He smells all right at a distance, but up close? Phew!" he screwed up his face and waved his hands to banish the imagined stench.

  
Rob held his breath for a moment, humiliated that the weyr-bred boy had apparently seen him laughed at, and more than a little shocked at Falloner's frank criticism of an adult. But then he thought about how ridiculous his father could be, blustering and incensed that apprentices were _imperfect_. Just because they were grown-ups didn't mean they were particularly well-behaved.

The idea that adults should be called naughty was just amusing enough to take a bit of the sting out of the runner's laughter. He glanced over his shoulder at Falloner's profile. The mischief in his eyes was contagious.

Laughter bubbled out of Rob, and Falloner dissolved in giggles, too.

Then he came over to slap Rob's back and mutter, in that way only a twelve-year-old boy can, about how disgusting the runner's feet had been, last spring when he arrived from some other hold, smeared with filth, the toenails gnarled and blackened, stinking like a rotten wherry head. "And what do you suppose the Lady holder does? She bids me draw Runner Vielar a nice bath!"

It shouldn't have been so funny. He could hear his mother's reasoned scolding in his head, about how vital Runners' service was to the Holders and Harpers of Pern. But in that moment Rob could barely catch his breath. The boys leaned on each other, weak with hilarity, all the way up the stairs, until they parted for their respective rooms.

  
When Rob reached the suite he shared with his mother, she was still napping. In his heart he knew he would one day speak to his father about everything. But he knew it would best happen when Robinton himself was grown, a harper in his own right. Then Petiron would have to hear him. Until then? The best he could do was to ignore his father entirely, and be there for his mother whenever he could.

  
As for Vielar, there was only one thing to be done. He took a settling breath, and snatched up his drum and flute, skins and ink; he sought out a perch in the window of an unused guest room with enough dust on the sill that it stood in for a sand table. After an hour's giggling labor, picturing Falloner's face when he heard it, he had worked out a rollicking jig entitled "Drawing the Runner's Bath."


End file.
